The information age has produced an explosion of content for people to read. This content includes traditional media such as books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, manuals, guides, references, articles, reports, documents, etc. that exist in print, as well as electronic media in which the aforesaid works are provided in digital form. The Internet has further enabled an even wider publication of content in the form of document downloads, such as portable document files and e-books.
Given the vast sea of content that people encounter, it is not uncommon for a person to read something and later recall a memorable phrase or subject, but not remember the exact source of the phrase or subject. The person may attempt to obtain recently read items in an effort to find the phrase or subject, but searching these items in this manner can be tedious, time consuming, and unfruitful. A person may also simply wish to research a particular subject in a set of books or other content that the person owns, has read, or is otherwise aware of.
Separately, various search engines have attempted to catalogue Web pages available on the Internet. However, given the enormous amount of content published electronically on the Internet, searching the entire Internet for a phrase or subject in a particular source the reader recently read can be similar to finding a needle in a haystack. The reader may have to wade through pages and pages of search results provided by search engines, and in the end, may still be unable to locate the desired source. Moreover, the desired source may not have been published on the Internet in the first place, and thus would not be included in this type of search.
Electronic searching of public library catalogs is also known, but such searching is limited to bibliographic information and other meta-information that describe the library content. Full text searching of public library content is not available, and even if it were, the search may produce results from sources that are not of interest to the user.
Moreover, a user owning a physical work may wish to have access to an electronic version of the physical work (e.g., via a networked computer system), wherein the electronic version of the physical work appears the same as the physical work. Existing systems have not provided users with the ability to access such electronic versions of physical works based on the users' ownership of the physical works. U.S. Pat. No. 6,609,105 describes a system designed specifically to allow users to listen to electronic versions of music stored on compact discs, DVD's, cassette tapes, or records. However, provision of electronic music (e.g., via data streaming) presents a different set of challenges, and hence a different set of solutions, than providing a user with access to electronic versions of physical works that are visually displayed. What is needed, in at least one aspect, is a method and apparatus that can process a user's request to access an electronic version of a physical work, determine the user's ownership of the physical work, and provide access to the electronic version of the physical work based on the user's ownership of the physical work.